Man-o-Man! I am really going to enjoy her being in Congress for at least the next two years. Not to mention that she is definitely SILF material!

Democrat-Socialist Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Amazon on Monday over the news that it has picked Long Island City in Queens as the site of a new headquarters, arguing it will hurt the local community in the New York City borough.

"We've been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this. The community's response? Outrage," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the first of a series of tweets over the development.

"Amazon is a billion-dollar company," she wrote. "The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here."

Ocasio-Cortez, who is set to take her seat in Congress next year, questioned aspects of Amazon's planned move, saying that it won't necessarily benefit the local community.

"Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?" she tweeted. "What's the quality of jobs ... how many are promised?"

"Displacement is not community development," she wrote. "Shuffling working class people out of a community does not improve their quality of life."

Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, contended the company should offer "good healthcare, living wages, (and) affordable rent" to members of the community. "Corporations that offer none of those things should be met w/ skepticism."

The Hill could not reach Amazon for an immediate response.

Ocasio-Cortez is not the first progressive to take aim at the company in recent months. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) earlier this year ripped into Amazon over its minimum wage policy. The company caved and, as of Nov. 1, began providing a minimum $15 an hour salary for all employees.

"(T)his isn't just about one company or one headquarters," she wrote. "It's about cost of living, corps paying their fair share, etc.""It's not about picking a fight, either. I was elected to advocate for our community's interests — & they've requested, clearly, to voice their concerns."

I think she is right but for the wrong reasons. A tax cut for Bezos means that small businesses and individuals will pay his share - and that seems very, very wrong. And remember how attracting Foxconn or something like that in Wisconsin (with YUUGE tax cuts for them) worked out - now Chinese workers will be imported since apparently there are not enough locals who want to earn $7/hr wage.

I'm not buying it, a mega corp like Amazon, does not need an overpriced RE footprint in the Big Apple. Their brand is not NYC chic like let's say Carl Icahn Enterprises or Bloomberg.

Seriously, we grew our tiny hedge fund in Southern MA, adding little headcount, automating everything as we grew, and thus, were able to hire the best prop trader out there, so that everyone cashed out well in the end.

Amazon is just doing this for the tax breaks little else.

All this means is that the first wave of hirees will be paid a notice higher than let's say Citigroup, Pepsico, Time Warner, etc, but then, as they discover that these ppl are basically a waste of headcount/resources, the next wave will be layoffs, followed by creating an HQ3 near Wilmington Delaware which is what JPM and others have done before them.

The banks must be worried She will be arrested before he first year is up if they wont give her a line of credit that commiserates with a 174K salary.

Have you learned nothing from history? Remember Hillary got a $4 million loan right after her an Bill left the White House "flat broke." The banks will get together and find one of their members to give her a loan, as a way to keep themselves off her target list. Especially if Nancy is not elected Speaker, which means Nancy and the other captured pols will not be able to keep crusading Alexandria in line.

While a press release from Amazon says Long Island City, New York and Crystal City, Virginia, will be paying around $2.0 billion dollars in tax breaks and incentives to the company to host its second headquarters, the real cost is likely to be more than double that.

Amazon and CEO Jeff Bezos are set to pocket about $4 billion from the two municipalities, and the total bill could come out to around $4.2 billion. That’s because New York and Arlington County, Virginia, will need to borrow money by issuing bonds to pay for the tax credits. The total means an additional $200 million in interest payments, based on New York and Arlington County’s most recently issued bond rates of about 5%.

Local elected officials in New York have already spoken out against the deal.

“Offering massive corporate welfare from scarce public resources to one of the wealthiest corporations in the world at a time of great need in our state is just wrong,” New York state Senator Michael Gianaris and New York City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer wrote in an op-ed earlier this week.

New York will have to issue bonds because it is already more than $100 billion in debt ($116 billion as of fiscal year 2017). For just the city, debt service costs totaled about 11 percent of tax revenues last year. Debt for New York City has grown from $4,923 per person in 2000 to $10,113 in 2017, an increase of 105 percent, the comptroller’s office reports.

In addition to the $1.5 billion in subsidies from New York and $573 million from Virginia that Amazon highlights in its press release, the company is in line to collect $200 million from each state for bonus jobs created over 25,000 ($400 million total), a $300 million infrastructure fund in Arlington and an additional $1.3 billion in additional tax breaks from New York City. Those will come from the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program and the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program.

(The $325 million initial outlay from New York is a cash grant, or free money giveaway, to Bezos, the world’s richest man, and Amazon, a company with a valuation of around $1 trillion; the $1.2 billion in refundable tax credits are a tax loophole created to help the poor that essentially allows Amazon to skip tax on its employees incomes up to $1.2 billion.)

That’s a total of just over $4 billion. That would also mean more jobs in both locations, but New York City, in particular, isn’t exactly short on job creation or money spent on it. According to the New York State Comptroller’s Office, “New York City is undergoing its largest and longest job expansion since World War II.”

The office reports that more than 700,000 jobs have been added during the past eight years, meaning an average of 87,500 jobs per year. At that pace, an additional 25,000 jobs over ten years would be an addition of just 3% more jobs. New York is also paying about double per job what Virginia is paying, as a result of its Excelsior Jobs Program, paying $61,000 per job compared to $23,000 each in Virginia.

Economists generally agree that the tax incentives politicians offer companies tend to make little difference. That was evidenced by Amazon’s decision to pick New York and Virginia or much larger offers from Maryland and New Jersey, said Michael Farren, an economist at the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank.

New York City dropped $180 million on Long Island City in new spending to bolster transit, fix the sewer system and attract new, good-paying jobs. Half of the city’s proposed new spending, about $95 million, is for sewers.

Major infrastructure, economic, and housing changes are already in motion.There have been 41 new apartment buildings built in LIC since 2010. Last year, more new apartments were built in Long Island City than in any other neighborhood in New York.Grant Long, a senior economist for StreetEasy, says that housing prices have already risen by 5 percent in Queens this year.Long Island City is already the priciest neighborhood in Queens: The median rent in the borough’s northwestern section, which includes LIC, is just under $3,000/month, according to the latest Douglas Elliman market report.

Long Island City is served by a few subway lines, with only one—the 7—providing a link to major Manhattan hubs like Grand Central-42nd Street or Times Square. And service on the 7, as any regular commuter will tell you, is often packed during rush hour. I would assume that Amazon would have flex time???

Nothing new for VA. Hampton, VA did the tax incentive and other giveaways to snag a Gateway Computer plant a while back. Ended up losing it all.

"The city of Hampton and the state of Virginia are trying to recoup some of the $1.5 million granted to Gateway in 1999 as part of a deal in which the company promised to add more than 1,200 workers on top of the 2,100 people it employed at the time. The company only hired about 400 more workers before starting to significantly reduce its staffing in 2001. The last round of layoffs hit in March when Gateway eliminated 237 jobs."

If I was Amazon I would tell NY politicians to fuck off and go somewhere else for HQ2. Stupid politicians think jobs and economic growth is bad. They will give a hard time to Amazon for decades to come.

What ppl don't realize is that New York City, yes, the location, doesn't affect Amazon's business.

Amazon can easily open a campus in Ann Arbor Michigan as well as Urbana-Champaign Illinois, and hire 1000s of students, recent graduates, researchers, pay them just a notch above postdoc wages, and they could sustain those operations FOREVER.

The only reason why my own firm didn't open an Ann Arbor back office is because the person(s) I'd known at Univ of Michigan, graduated and left the region and thus, we didn't have ppl around to lead the effort. If that had occurred, I would have moved there and fucked hoes in Windsor Ontario, during the less busy weekdays and Toronto, on the weekends.

What ppl don't realize is that New York City, yes, the location, doesn't affect Amazon's business.

Amazon can easily open a campus in Ann Arbor Michigan as well as Urbana-Champaign Illinois, and hire 1000s of students, recent graduates, researchers, pay them just a notch above postdoc wages, and they could sustain those operations FOREVER.

The only reason why my own firm didn't open an Ann Arbor back office is because the person(s) I'd known at Univ of Michigan, graduated and left the region and thus, we didn't have ppl around to lead the effort. If that had occurred, I would have moved there and fucked hoes in Windsor Ontario, during the less busy weekdays and Toronto, on the weekends.

Businesses that need talent will locate where the talent is. It's as simple as that. Amazon may not need as much talent for their HQ2 as a high tech firm would, but it needs the right geographical location and infrastructure. Tax breaks are an added incentive. I'm still surprised they chose NY.

Businesses that need talent will locate where the talent is. It's as simple as that. Amazon may not need as much talent for their HQ2 as a high tech firm would, but it needs the right geographical location and infrastructure. Tax breaks are an added incentive. I'm still surprised they chose NY.

It's kinda easy, it's a no cost opportunity to see what other markets they can tap, like finance, big media, etc, whose executive presence is highly Manhattan oriented.

The problem is that at most, that's a 5K to 10K setup, not 25K or 50K. as they like to say to the press. This is just a freebie and when the time comes, Amazon will fire whomever they like, to get back to a sustainable 5K number esp in NYC, where there's not really much to do, as HQ2 won't be a fulfillment or a data center.

It's kinda easy, it's a no cost opportunity to see what other markets they can tap, like finance, big media, etc, whose executive presence is highly Manhattan oriented.

You may have hit the nail on the head. I read an article about Amazon planning on offering online banking services. They are planning on going into banking and finance in a big way, isn't it? Say goodbye to your local branch down the streets folks. Amazon destroyed the big department stores that were gonna last for ever, and now bank branches will get shut down. If Amazon can do a better job, sure, why not?

You mean my CU? If they survived competition with big banks for so many years, they will survive AMZN too.

The local CU survives by offering more honesty to the customer. Banks are greedy fucking criminal organizations, designed to loot everything you have. Banks will shut down their branches and compete online. I don't think CU's will be able to compete with Amazon. The CU's will have more overheads and less volume. They could go completely online to save on overheads, but they will not have the volume that Amazon can muster up.

I don't think CU's will be able to compete with Amazon. The CU's will have more overheads and less volume. They could go completely online to save on overheads, but they will not have the volume that Amazon can muster up.

Think about it guys. The screen in front of you can instantly become a nice and friendly bank teller eager to help you. You will be able to do everything that a real teller can do. Your iris will be scanned to identify you. You can withdraw cash by having it put on your e-wallet. Bank branches will go the way of the travel agents. It's just a matter of time.Even ATM's will become obsolete.